Inert Day

Apart from having laundered my bedclothes and bath towels today (as I do here every Monday morning) I have done nothing for the entire day other than eat, read, play the piano keyboard and sleep.  I snoozed in the large tan leather chair this morning after breakfast and again on the monstrous sectional couch this afternoon after lunch.  While I dozed I heard the crashing pine cones, tossed by the unusually forceful winds from the surrounding sea pines onto the wooden deck.  The winds have ushered in clear air to push aside the rain and clouds we had this morning.

The inclement weather was my pretext for remaining indoors but it killed me to do so.  This afternoon after the sky cleared the blue vault constantly beckoned me and wore upon my morning guise.  It goes entirely against my grain to have no enterprise, to divert myself only by my imagination, to separate myself from industry to introspection and thought. I am  however bound to confess I am pleased to have done so.  The piano for example requires time as much as study to foster inspiration.  I am still adjusting to the novelty of the keyboard sounds and the light touch of the keys. I have sadly not enlarged my repertoire.  On the literary front I finally attacked James Joyce’s monumental “Ulysses” which admittedly may in part explain my daytime somnolence.

It is so like me to tie myself in knots about not “doing” anything. I seemingly have to be on the go at all times, jumping from one scheme to another.  At least I can report that I had the anticipated conversation with our financial advisor to get that matter out of the way.  I can use that heroic accomplishment to appease my anxiety.  On the other hand, now that most of the day is behind me and the opportunity to do anything different is all but exhausted, I am content not to have submitted to those unreasoned urges and to have stayed put for once.  Inertia after all is a dichotomous  condition – never moving or never stopping.

Since our arrival on the Island we have relentlessly prosecuted our original plan to bicycle.  The diligence is showing its results but they’re not quite what I would have anticipated.  The sylph-like form is not of what I speak; rather it is the sore knees and back. This persistent exercise has wrought corporeal ruin!  I have reluctantly accepted that a break is a good thing to enable one’s body to recuperate.  It should not astound me not to have known that rudimentary fact as I have seldom engaged in such sustained exercise.  We are revamping our philosophy to reduce the daily jaunts from what are routinely four-hour hikes to something closer to two hours each.

After 2 1/2 months here I am adjusting to the acknowledgement that one needn’t be as frantic as I have been about milking the occasion for everything it’s worth.  It is an anomaly for me to have so much time to myself in a place which is perpetually pleasant. Historically there has always been a time limit upon such pleasure; now it’s a matter of pacing ourselves.

In common usage, the term “inertia” may refer to an object’s “amount of resistance to change in velocity” (which is quantified by its mass), or sometimes to its momentum, depending on the context. The term “inertia” is more properly understood as shorthand for “the principle of inertia” as described by Newton in his First Law of Motion: that an object not subject to any net external force moves at a constant velocity. Thus, an object will continue moving at its current velocity until some force causes its speed or direction to change. Wikipedia